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Republic of Tarracon República de Tarracōn
Flag Coat of arms
Motto: Tarracon Antes Quemada Que Vencida "Rather Burned Than Defeated"
Anthem: March unto Freedom
Location of Tarracon
Capital and largest city	Brechon
Other languages	Esmeiran
Demonym(s)	Tarraconian
Government	Presidential Republic
Legislature	General Congress
Population
• 2020 estimate	77,895,231
• 2002 census	75,125,986
Currency	New Continental Peso

The Republic of Tarracon is a nation on the western coast of Asteria Superior, bordered by Rizealand, Chistovodia, Vinalia, Ardesia, Eldmark, and shared a lacustrine border with Cassier, making it the only nation to share borders with every nation in continental Asteria Superior. The majority of it's 77 million inhabitants speak Esmeiran, making it the largest Esmeiran-speaking population in the world as well as the largest self-identified Paretian ancestry nation. Tarracon is a centrally administered state with 18 provinces and several large cities including Brechon, Alenadora, and Turquesa.

History

Independence

In the immediate aftermath of the independence movement, Nou Remana was divided into four separate territories which were, from North to South: Brechon, Alenadora, Cetrino, and Cornezuelo. At the time, San Andreas was also partly Esmieran and was sometimes considered part of Nou Remana, although its preeminent location at the termination of the trade winds kept its interests separate from the other constituents of the future Tarracōn. The San Andreans saw themselves as the natural leader of the new United Colonies, a project that they pursued aggressively. They found allies to the south where local leaders were anxious to forge new connections with their recent allies in independence, both fearing reprisal from adjacent colonial subjects and being largely dependent on San Andreas for trade. Conversely, Fáel, the oldest colony on the continent, was fiercely resistant to this new form of centralization and found allies in New Estmere. Skirmishes broke out between the different factions, but San Andreas' comparatively high wealth allowed them to rapidly centralize their power and bring up regiments of revolutionaries from the South to support their aggressive form of diplomacy. While representatives from the colonies were meeting in closed sessions and attempting to form a union, one of the revolutionary generals styled himself as the president and began a tour of the potential nation with his new continental army. The parades drew attention from supporters, who were likely to join, and detractors, many of whom were attacked by the soldiers. This has since been called "Parade Diplomacy" and, while the negotiations may not have been otherwise successful, quickly ended meetings between colonial representatives after a parade group fired into crowd and killed seventeen men and women. Fleeing riots and militias, the San Andreans returned to their home city with reports of ungrateful allies and violence against the heroes of the revolution.

San Andreas passed its own constitution, the Bregue Proclamation, establishing a republic. While a republic in name, its presidency was formed in imitation of a Euclean monarchy rather than as a revolutionary state. Plans were draw up to unify the secessionist movements in the rest of former-Gaullican Asteria Superior, but a war was already upon the Bregueists as its citizens began to violate treaties with native states in the interior. The Plains Wars would take the greatest effort of the new nation to contain for the next decade along with the suppression of its own federalists. Eventually, interest in annexing Rizealand would return, but surprisingly resulted in a counter-invasion as Rizean veterans from the invasion of Cassier returned to the South. Some leaders escaped and fled towards Brechon, the nearest garrisoned city, but they were hotly pursued by Colonel Benjamin Raferty, a revolutionary figure from Fáel who would go on to become the 4th President of Rizealand. He and his cavalry regiment caught up to the fleeing ministers in Brechon, initially planning to take the city for Rizealand and perhaps to punish the partisans who had terrorized Fáel during the parades, but he was shocked by the decrepit state of Brechon. Realizing the condition of Nou Remana was the result of San Andrean preeminence and knowing also the Rizean desire for retribution against their erstwhile allies, Raferty surrounded the city (somewhat loosely) and communicated to the city that, if they turned over certain traitorous San Andrean figures, the city would be spared. The city garrison acquiesced to this demand and Raferty retreated, crucially delaying the rapid seizure of territory and ultimately ending the war before it spread south. Later, after retiring from the military, Raferty returned to Brechon where he advised a constitutional committee on the creation of a new republic in Rizean fashion. This attention helped to earn him a position in the Rogers government and, during his own presidency, helped to ameliorate tensions with Tarracōn.

Tarracōn continued their eastward expansion, reaching and claiming the Great Basin alongside Chistovodia long before it was populated by Eucleans. Exploration of the basin itself proved difficult and many explorers died in the attempt to document the area. The Avigona River, which flows through the southern extremes of the nation, became the primary development corridor during this period. Many small mining operations were established in the mountains and their products were easily transported by boat to the Bay of Amoratado. The government encouraged this activity by importing expensive mining equipment and giving them to anyone whose claim yielded silver or other valuables. At the same time, the northeastern interior was still subject to conflicts between natives, Tarracōn citizens, and opportunistic Rizeans. Fortresses were established in the region, but there was no overarching effort to civilize or control the area. The focus on the interior, along with the capture of San Andrean navy previously, greatly hampered the fledgling economy of Tarracōn and they were often dependent on neighboring Rizealand for goods and transport. The lack of healthy merchant marine gave rise to a division in the nation between the miners and riparian agriculturists of the interior and the coastal population which was more directly dependent on the flow of goods. The vast public expense of subsidizing the construction of unknown hundreds of of ships was considered a waste by the raft and barge enjoyers of the Avigona shores, but were an essential part of the development of the economy for cities like Brechon.

19th Century

The internal trade conflicts continued into the 19th century when the national government, under the influence of the interior factions, began to investigate international rail links between Turquesa and either Ardesia or Chistovodia. Both projects would require finding a suitable route through a mountain range at extravagant expense. With the support of Ardesia, construction on a line to Popocacingo began. At the same time, the city of Brechon began courting international firms to establish a hub in their city, especially East Eucleans. The decline of slavery brought about a surplus of unengaged ships accustomed to the Transvehemen voyage and the coastal cities of Tarracōn received a surprising degree of interest for a loosely regulated, national port of call in the Asterias. Hosting active and former slave trading was considered a small price to pay for access to tonnage and many ships designated for human trafficking raised the flag of Tarracōn. While Tarracōn won a small degree of independence from Rizean shipwrights, the gentile society of the capital was invaded by pirates and slavers who were welcomed with open arms. This increased tensions with the small-claim mining operators of the interior, but they were placated somewhat by an enormous investment of human capital into the rail project there. Both slaves and indentured former slaves worked and died in large numbers to carve tunnels through the unforgiving desert mountains of Southern Tarracōn.

In the late 19th century, Tarracōn offered some support to Chistovodian independence and, later, to Vinalian independence in an effort to get one or both nations to surrender their claims to the Great Basin. Tarracōn forces were stationed in the basin itself, at great peril and expense, under the command of Hector Atavio. Suffering extremely high rates of desertion, Atavio's forces were supplemented by slaves from the rail projects in the South, many of who had developed superb desert survival skills. Atavio's reliance on slaves eventually led to mutual loyalty and, ultimately sparked a revolution in which Atavio's force formed the vanguard of an abolitionist movement. After a relatively brief struggle, a new Atavist government was established with the primary objective of eliminating undesirable persons and liberating their fortunes to the state. Atavism was initially focused on abolition of slavery, but after Hector's death, began to take the form of a more reactionary purity cult. Official Tarracōn policy from that point, however, did include automatic declaration of war against any state with legalized slavery.

20th Century

In the early 20th century, Tarracōn engaged in a series of conflicts with every nation bordering the Great Basin in an effort to protect their claim to that region. It was partly successful and the largest segment of the basin is now within the borders of Tarracōn, but remains almost entirely uninhabited except for commercial exploration sites.

After Rizealand ascended to its position of international preeminence, Tarracōn became simultaneously more influenced by their markets and more resentful of that influence. Many multilateral projects were embarked on despite popular feelings and currently a web of corporations dominate the economic landscape of Tarracōn.

Politics

Cadre System

During the Atavio government, Hector and Kélé were both concerned that the nation would backslide towards segregation and racial caste unless they undertook major cultural reforms. One of the most important efforts, which is still in effect now, was the integration of all church parishes, but they also formulated many other policies and especially drew upon their former command to influence and implement policy. In YYYY, a rumor reached Kélé that a commission in Cetrino organized to redistribute seized farmland was only granting plots to white citizens. Surprised that their own officials were so blatantly, Kélé and Hector gathered a group of eleven former commandos and commissioned them to investigate the rumor and to immediately put an end to any segregationist policies they discovered. Immediately upon boarding a train to Cetrino, however, the group's white and black members were moved into separate carriages by other passengers, which they eventually included in their final report. After arriving in Cetrino, they began collecting rumors before attending a commission meeting in which fifteen plots of farmland were distributed to white citizens. Warned to be cautious in their work, they attended several subsequent meetings in which no farmland was granted to black citizens, but were still conflicted whether or not to attempt to rectify the issue alone. They eventually decided that one of their own members, Massa Makan, would apply for a land grant from the commission to test their process. Massa, being a member of the revolutionary vanguard, they assumed would be able to earn a grant from the commission even if they were otherwise biased against black citizens, but his application was denied in the very next meeting.

The group compiled a report of the stories they had heard as well as their experiment and sent it to Hector and Kélé. Upon receipt, it was said that Hector remarked "ellos deberían limpiar la basura", although this exact phrase did not appear in their official order for their agents to arrest the commission members and invalidate previous land grants. To enable the group to effectuate their duties, the order referred to them as a cadre and enumerate the power to make arrests and deputize other citizens. There was some argument within the cadre as to whether or not deputization was warranted in their case since they were official agents of the president and so was the commission indirectly, but ultimately a compromise was stuck and the cadre enlisted the support of the local Carabineros (which was acting as law enforcement at the time) and then confronted the commission at their next public meeting. The commission disbanded without any struggle, but when the cadre invalidated all previous land grants, a group of white protestors quickly gathered and were only disbanded by the Carabineros firing into the air. Eventually, the cadre and several dozen deputies had to individually evict thirty-seven white families and force them to reapply for allotments from a new commission. During these evictions, three people died in a firefight.

Hector was devastated and confused that his own commissioners were failing to implement policy properly. Originally, both he and Kélé envisioned more general support for their populist policies, but after Cetrino they began sending dozens of cadres across the nation to ensure proper adherence to their objectives. Their agents often found corruption in the east where officials did not expect oversight and racism everywhere, even in explicit anti-racism committees formed with hand-picked progressive loyalists. Cadres were also responsible for non-legal missions such as communicating with the working class and especially in mobilizing them to participate in state programs. Cadres were often the only government agents present in native communities which lacked mayors or other local political officials in the national chain of command.

After the death of Hector Atavio, governing figures quickly moved away from his proposed revolutionary society and adopted traditionalist objectives, most notably a uniform Esmeiran society. Atavio himself was famously suspicious of the Gaullican merchant class, who he often claimed had blood on their hands. While there were few Gaullican merchants who had survived the Hector and Kélé years, there were many Creole speakers who were targeted for assimilation into the new Esmeiran social order. Most Creole speakers were black or mixed race and these individuals were labelled for remedial language instruction, which typically prevented them from accessing higher education or government posts. Cadres in the post-Hector government were known to interview candidates for public office and to blacklist anyone who a Gaullicois accent or speech impediment.

Chevaux Jaunes

The general anti-Gaullican sentiment of the Atavist leadership lead many prominent individuals to intentionally obfuscate their ancestry, to feign ignorance of the Gaullican language, and often to exaggerate their personal loyalty to the Atavist regime. As a result, the Gaullican and creole elements of society became entwined with each other and the state, forming the secret society called the Yellow Horses. The extent of this association is unclear, but it certainly existed under Andrés Juánez, a provincial administrator who served in several senior posts. Andrés' first language was Gaullican and he actively sought out other Gaullican speakers and gave them appointments in the government, public contracts, and other favors. This was eventually discovered after Andrés' death when his will, which was written in Gaullican, insisted that be the language of his funeral rite. Andrés owned a stable where he bred Palomino horses and gave them away as gifts to his friends and political appointees, which is where the term for the secret society of Gaullicans comes from.

Various secret symbols for this community have emerged, sometimes incorrect associations, sometimes becoming functional through their constant appearance in propaganda. Secret handshakes and code words have also been reported, but it is most likely that the system of mutual recognition depended primarily on family connections and chains of personal introduction. It was not, of course, illegal to be Gaullican, but speaking the language would earn a "remedial language" label that would halt political advancement and likely lose any appointments or contracts. This mild oppression was called the syndicat blasé in letters of secret Gaullicans.

Official state disapproval of Gaullican speakers quickly reduced the number of native and secondary speakers and, within a single generation, fluent Gaullican speakers were relatively rare. The secret society of the Gaullicois endured, however, partly because of the implied disapproval of having Gaullican ancestry and partly because of the patronage appointments and profits earned through the illegal association. At the same time that the Gaullican language was deflating in Tarracon, Gaullican literature was being translated aggressively through state funded scholars who desired citizens to still be able to operate their Gaullican-made moteur modèle 17's and to manufacture non-toxic pharmaceuticals. University students destined for high office were inundated with Gaullican high ideals of statecraft and poetry, which were simultaneously corrupt foreign influences if uttered in their native tongue. The ranks of the Chevaux Jaunes were thus reinforced by a new kind of faux Gaullican intellectual and coffee-shop revolutionaries, allowing the society to survive mere demographic shifts.

Parallel to the parlor Gaullicois, a similar movement existed among Black Gaullican-speakers and Creole Maroons. This association allowed both faction to avoid the Atavist bureaucracy to their mutual enrichment, but also drew the ire of vigilant cadres looking for insurrection. When they did not find insurrection, some cadres simply invented it among the suspicious remediador de idiomas in the Black quarters of Pajizo and Haudito. Although no one was ever arrested for speaking Creole, many slight offences drew disproportionate sentences and the egalitarian ideals of the original Atavist movement were slowly eroded by an increasingly anti-Black sentiment among the cadres. Although Creole speakers were often equal members of the fraternity of the Gaullicois, their white brothers seldom had any interest in desegregation. A general disinterest in the plight of the Creoles gradually split the Yellow Horses into separate herds, right up until the mid 20th century.